January – Sam wrote a long, newsy letter sometime during the month from Munich, Germany to an unidentified person. he was working on A Tramp Abroad and mentioned that a big octavo book, “requires a long pull and an almighty steady one.” Sam missed New England weather:

“I ache for a good honest all day, all night snowstorm, with a wind-up gale of 150 miles an hour and 35 degrees below zero. that is the only kind of weather that is fit and right for January” [MTLE 4: 1].

In his Jan. 26 letter to Twichell, Sam wrote of telling “the yarn about the limburger cheese & the box of guns, too” to the American artists club in Munich, and also to guests at their house [MTLE 4: 9]. Fatout identifies this story as first published for part of “Some Rambling Notes,” in The Stolen White Elephant (1882), and later appearing as “The Invalid’s Story,” In Defense of Harriet Shelley and Other Essays (1892) [Fatout, MT Speaking 124].

Sam inscribed a copy of Hans Hendrick’s (1834-1889) Memoirs of Hans Hendrik, The Arctic Traveller (1878): “S.L. Clemens / Munich, Bavaria, / January, 1879. / A very valuable book / —& unique” [Gribben 307].

Sam referred in his notebook to Freidrich Max Muller (1823-1900) as an eminent philologist, who, along with Prof. William D. Whitney and James H. Trumbull responded only with ”offensive answers or silence” to Sam’s inquiries [MTNJ 2: 266].